


Ashen Lion

by MidwesternDuchess



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Blue Lion Spoilers, Dimitri went Too Far and needed his ass kicked, F/M, SO LIKE laughs nervously HOW ABOUT THAT SHIT WITH RANDOLPH HUH, also I just needed an excuse to practice fight scenes, anyway I was whole ass ready to fight over that scene, dimileth in the sense that like byleth is trying to help, she just also has a sword
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 11:04:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20446112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidwesternDuchess/pseuds/MidwesternDuchess
Summary: The cold bite of steel stills Dimitri where he stands—cloak snapping at his ankles, caught in phantom momentum as he abruptly aborts the movement that would kill her.“A girl and a dagger,” Byleth remarks coolly, the blade she keeps at her belt poised against his throat. It’s still red with Randolph’s blood. “Where have I heard this story before?”





	Ashen Lion

“Professor!”

Byleth turns immediately, one hand still gripping Felix tightly by the shoulder as Mercedes tends to his broken leg. The swordsman’s expression is as cold as ever—frozen in the face of pain and discomfort—but his refusal to shake her hold tells Byleth all she needs to know.

It’s Annette—still wearing bandages of her own, fresh from healing herself—hurrying over to them, weaving through throngs of the weary and wounded to stumble over to them, paler than Byleth’s ever seen her.

Byleth steadies Annette with her free hand, concerned by her pallor, while Mercedes suddenly stills, all attention drawn to the redheaded woman as her healing spell hangs suspended. Felix _ tsks _in annoyance, but doesn’t seem bothered. Or surprised.

“Annette,” Byleth greets tersely, while Mercedes rises to her feet with a murmured, _ “Annie.” _ “What is it?”

She shakes beneath Byleth’s touch—trembles with a fragility Byleth has never associated with such a loud and bright personality—and when Mercedes gathers one of Annette’s hands up in two of hers, Byleth drops her arm, watching.

“He...he _ has _ someone, Professor,” Annette whispers, and Byleth feels a sudden chill despite the heat of the day. “I think he took a prisoner.”

Felix tenses under Byleth’s hand—bones suddenly standing out like knives across his back as he goes stock-still and rigid—and Byleth squeezes his shoulder with reassurance she doesn’t feel.

Mercedes’ brow creases with concern. “A prisoner?” she asks, voice faint and faraway as always. “You mean an Imperial Soldier?”

Annette nods uneasily, and Byleth watches her clutch Mercedes’ hands tighter.

“I’ve never known the Boar to play with his prey,” Felix remarks darkly. Byleth glances down at him, concerned at the cold detachment in his gaze as he stares blankly across the courtyard. “But who knows what kind of monster he’s become, left unchecked as long as he has.”

His assessment threatens to send another chill ricocheting down Byleth’s spine, but she holds it together. 

“I’ll...” Byleth trails off as the three students glance to her.

She fancies she can hear the ghost of Sothis’ scathing tone in her mind, the only conscience she ever had to speak of, a Goddess serving as the devil’s advocate for her every thought—_ you’ll _ ** _what? _ ** _ Fix things? You can barely keep it together even _ ** _with_ ** _ the power to turn back time! _

Byleth’s considered it. On her worst nights, she’s laid in bed, resisting the urge to call upon her Divine magic, staying her hands where they shake to turn back the clock—not for a moment, or even an hour, but years, back to the start, maybe even past that—

“I’ll take care of things,” she finishes, awkward even to her own ears, and strides off before her students can read any misgivings showing through her neutral expression.

She moves silently through the crowds of people milling about the monastery—recovering soldiers, wounded scouts, harried clerics, displaced citizens, fearful worshipers—eyeing the various groups and pairings she passes. Sylvain is predictably at Ingrid’s side—a location he seems to have attached himself to of late, with little intention of surrendering it—while Ingrid herself works to calm Dorothea, who clings to the front of Ingrid’s cloak, grip so tight her fingers are bone-white and shaking.

“...the way of war,” Ingrid is murmuring when Byleth moves past, voice hoarse after shouting out commands to her battalion all battle. She’s favoring her right leg—Byleth spies her leaning heavily on Sylvain, even as she attempts to rally for Dorothea. “I’m sorry.”

Dorothea manages some response—her expression is perfectly arranged, wiped clean of any sadness—but Byleth hears her voice shake and just catches the name, _ “Feride.” _

Byleth winces as she puts the group behind her, walking on. Ferdinand von Aegir. She’d once offered a casual invitation for him to join her class back at the Academy, but he’d balked at the idea of leaving Black Eagle House, and Byleth hadn’t pushed him. And now he’s gone.

If she’d known how things were going to end, she’d have torn the sky apart to have every last student safe beneath the Blue Lion banner. But that is Byleth’s way, isn’t it—tangled up in the mistakes of the past, never quite seeing the promise of the future.

Beyond them, Petra stands as tall and proud as her wounds will allow, watchful eyes sweeping over the crowd while Ashe and Ignatz restring bows on the ground beside her. Byleth wants to tell her it’s fine—she can relax, get some sleep, eat something—but she recalls the close call both archers had suffered when Petra’s battalion unexpectedly broke under the pressure of two Demonic Beasts, and she leaves the Brigid princess to it.

She passes the rest of her students, finding them broken off in pairs or groups, all in similar states of disarray—Caspar is nursing a busted jaw being tended to silently by Linhardt, while Raphael and Lysithea try to encourage a frighteningly pale Marianne to eat something. In the corner, Byleth watches Shamir duck her head at something Catherine tells her, and when Catherine goes to tilt her chin back up, Byleth dutifully drops her gaze and turns to corner.

The quiet closes in on her as she moves deeper into the monastery—they’d only managed to salvage parts of it so far, and vast swathes of it remain a wild, crumbling mess of shattered stonework and ruined marble—and it remains her so viscerally of that night she’d woken up on the riverbed—five years _ late— _that she finds herself drawing the Sword of the Creator just to settle her nerves.

Byleth flicks her wrist in a practiced movement, snapping the Sword of the Creator free to hang loose as a whip, its spiked edges hissing as they’re dragged along the stone floor.

A prisoner. Goddess fucking help her.

She finds him in a lower chamber—one she dully remembers being used as a storehouse—and hears voices as she draws nearer—arguments about families and corpses and honor and duty and war and torture and—

_ “If so, I will do you the service of removing your eyes first, so that—” _

Dimitri’s voice—so low and cold and _ wrong— _hisses, and Byleth grits her teeth, snapping the Sword of the Creator back into one piece and storming into the room, his threat still ringing in her ears as if he’d leveled it against her instead—

_ “Dimitri,” _ Byleth’s voice cracks like a whip across the chamber—echoing off the stone walls to reverberate with a whisper of the authority she once had—and both men look up, startled.

The Sword in her hand ignites as her anger rouses itself—red light slips across the flat of the blade, crimson rivulets of energy that flare and dim as though the Relic is a living, breathing thing feeding on her temper.

Her gaze falls upon the prisoner kneeling before him, and her breath catches. 

“General Randolph,” she realizes, watching his throat bob with fear. When had Dimitri even had time to corner him? She must have been so preoccupied with Felix’s leg—

She watches Dimitri reach for his lance, and snaps to attention, drawing further into the room.

“That’s enough, Dimitri,” Byleth orders, sheathing the Sword of the Creator as she strides forward. She can hardly defuse a situation holding a Hero’s Relic, and she moves to place herself between Dimitri and Randolph, unarmed.

Dimitri skirts her closeness—unnerved as she guessed he would be—and she uses the buffer to circle back around, placing Randolph between them again, watching as he turns to face her, still on his knees, and _ Goddess _ this is so _ wrong— _

Byleth’s hand falls to her hip, where the Sword of the Creator weighs heavily on her belt, aglow with the thrum of her anger. Its dull light flickers in time with her phantom pulse, the fringed edges of the blade throwing harsh, horrific shadows across the floor.

Death by Hero’s Relic is a punishment—Byleth has executed enough with the Sword of the Creator to know as much. Randolph does not deserve such a fate. He doesn’t deserve any of this.

She knows he has to die—the moment Annette told her there was a prisoner she knew they could never leave the monastery again, could not be allowed to walk free—not with Dimitri still laboring under his own fears and shortcomings, not with a monster masquerading as the King of Lions.

If she does not kill him here, he will suffer at Dimitri’s hands.

She allows herself one, shallow breath. She is a mercenary, not a soldier. War still tastes rotten on her tongue.

“General Randolph,” Byleth announces softly, falling back upon the unflinching blankness that saw her through many a gruesome job at Jeralt’s side. At the General’s back, Byleth can see Dimitri leering at her from the shadows, watching as she draws the knife. Randolph holds his chin high, but Goddess—he looks as young as Ashe.

“For your crimes against Garreg Mach Monastery and the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, I sentence you to die.” Her tone is absolutely steady—as lifeless as the knife in her hand. And what is a mercenary but an extension of a weapon? “If you’ve any last words, I will hear them.”

He stares at her silently—the moment dragging on so long Byleth assumes he has nothing to say—but as she lifts the blade, he turns his head away just slightly—

Randolph chokes out,_ “Thank you,” _ and _ Goddess, _if he sought to strike a blow of his own before her dagger fell, he had certainly succeeded.

What terrible, terrible last words.

His throat splits beneath Byleth’s practiced slice, and the General falls dead.

She just stands there for a moment, forcing herself to _ feel _ the loss of life—wrenching aside her mask of fixed indifference to allow herself to bleed out alongside the General.

“He will be buried,” Byleth murmurs. She isn’t asking—she fully intends to do it herself—but Dimitri just makes some quiet, vaguely annoyed sound. Byleth stealths her dagger with a snap.

“And you will _ never _ do anything like this again.” Even as a professor, Byleth never took tones with her students—with anyone. But now anger seeps into her voice like water in a sinking boat, and Byleth is willing to drown in it. At her hip, the Sword of the Creator sizzles and snaps—a physical manifestation of her temper, making her emotions clear where expressions have always failed her.

Dimitri scoffs at the display.

“You think yourself above me?” he asks, a cruel edge to his tone that reminds Byleth of the jagged point of his lance tip. “You think you can give me _ orders—?” _

“This was a tactical mistake,” Byleth snaps, cutting him off with more ferocity than she remembers even possessing. “Suppose he had escaped? Suppose someone in the monastery had smuggled him out? We are in the _ infancy _ of this war, Dimitri, and you want to exacerbate things by _ taking a prisoner.” _

Dimitri scowls. He was never well suited for sullenness.

“He would never had escaped,” he promises her, voice hissing out like it had when he’d toyed with the idea of taking Randolph’s _ eyes. _

Byleth holds her ground. “He didn’t need to be _ tortured. _ He had no additional information—no insights we had not already guessed.” She huffs a sigh, idly missing the weight of a weapon in her hand. She wonders if they can finish this conversation without crossing blades, and hears the echo of Sothis’ laugh at her naïveté. “This army may rally under the Blue Lion banner—but make no mistake about who they follow, Dimitri. You are burning bridges and expecting loyalty from the ashes and that is _ not possible.” _

He pauses—only for a moment. “You think me out of line?” he asks—faint in his anger, like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. “You—who always claimed to know me, who always stood by my side. You think anything I could have done to him could hold a candle to what his_ Emperor _has done to me?”

Byleth wonders when he stopped using Edelgard’s name. She remembers thinking he might have harbored an infatuation for the Imperial Princess, back in the early days of the Academy—he always seemed preoccupied with her plans, her safety, her moods—before learning the truth—

_ “She is my sister,” _ Dimitri had told her, shrugging like it was any other fact, while Byleth had gone stock-still at the reveal. _ “Of course I worry about her.” _

“You think your anger is unique,” Byleth murmurs, because _ Goddess _—it’s all becoming so clear. “You think you’re the only one to ever hurt this way.”

His eye snaps to hers—already narrowed with anger.

“When Jeralt died—” Dimitri begins in a thunderous tone, but Byleth slices her hand through the air, signaling for silence.

“Goddess _ wept, _ Dimitri!” she curses, ruthlessly cutting him off as she steps closer. If anger draws out Dimitri’s arrogance, it beckons to her boldness, and she stares him down with a ferocity that is but one wrong choice removed from recklessness. “Are you so _ blind? _

He bares his teeth, matching her anger, _ surpassing _it, a fury Byleth couldn’t reproduce even on her darkest days—

“I was at your side when you sought vengeance for your father,” he hisses. “And now you abandon me when I seek the same?”

Byleth’s hands _ ache _to draw the Sword of the Creator. She settles for fisting her hands so hard her nails cut into her palms.

“Killing Monica didn’t bring Jeralt _ back,” _ Byleth hisses. “It offered no relief—I didn’t feel _ better _ after I killed her, Dimitri, I felt _ worse.” _

_ “Then that is your own weakness!” _ Dimitri flings back at her, and Byleth’s expression wipes clean to hide her shock.

Something in the room shifts. Byleth can feel it like it’s a tangible, corporeal thing—suffocating and humid and so tense her breath burns in her lungs—

“I am not afraid of you,” Byleth tells him. She backs off, instincts forcing her to a more tactically advantageous position. The Sword of the Creator flashes violently at her side—spitting sparks as Byleth draws herself up to full height. “I have _ never _ been afraid of you.”

Not even when she found him at the monastery. Not even when he held her at lance point. Not even now—as she stands before whatever monstrous thing he has become.

Dimitri cocks an eyebrow—so damned _ arrogant— _and shifts his weight, throwing a corner of his cloak over a shoulder, and Byleth’s gaze narrows to the lance at his side as his fingers alight on the grip.

“No?” he inquires. “Then why did you interrupt? Why kill him yourself? If you’ve nothing to fear—if you’re as cold as you’ve always claimed to be—it should have been no trouble.”

He’s taunting her now, and Byleth would laugh at the absurdity of it if not for the anger pounding in her ears. She isn’t even paying any mind to whatever garbage he’s spinning—just the fact that he thinks he can _ speak _to her in such a manner—

“You,” she tells him, words boiling underneath her blank veneer, “are not worth another moment of my time.”

She intends to leave—truly, she does, she must prepare a grave for the General, if nothing else—when Dimitri speaks again—

“Perhaps the Ashen Demon has finally met her match.”

Had Byleth a heartbeat to spare, she rather thinks it would have stopped.

The Sword of the Creator clears its sheath with a crystalline ring as Byleth rounds on him—the Relic so bright in her hand she can feel the heat of it throwing shadows across her face—and Dimitri’s face splits on a smirk—

Byleth melts across the chamber—form so fluid she _ liquifies— _ the Sword of the Creator torching her path as she rushes to meet Dimitri. Their weapons cross and hold with an unholy clang of steel and Byleth’s breath _ catches _ as she’s suddenly pitted against strength Dimitri had not possessed five years ago, staggering at the sudden intensity of his lance arm.

She ducks the contact, spinning away, distancing herself, adjusting her grip. Dimitri doesn’t pursue her—content to prowl at the edges of her vision, waiting for her next move, dragging his lance across the ground beside him with a sickening _ shriek— _

Her coat falls behind her as she darts forward again, blade branding the air with a red-gold glow as she swings down, bones shivering at the force of contact as he catches the strike on the shaft of his lance, roughly shoving her off and whipping his weapon around faster than Byleth expects, forcing her to bend backwards at the waist, flipping over herself as the serrated spike whistles through the space her head had been a moment before.

She’s moving again before she’s even fully regained her footing, throwing herself across the floor as Dimitri’s lance comes down—splintering the space she’d occupied, shattering the stonework and sending shards flying—before rising to a knee to lash out with the Sword of the Creator, snapping the chain as it extends to wrap around Dimitri’s arm, catching and holding fast. The links gleam like hot coals—each one burning against the pitch of Dimitri’s armor—and Byleth grimaces as he pulls back, boots scrabbling for purchase as she resists.

Her shoulders cave under the duress—Dimitri’s strength so overwhelming Byleth feels her skeleton _ bow _ in response—gritting her teeth, clutching the hilt, straining against his power like it’s _ enthralling _ her—

The Sword of the Creator breaks free with a sickening _ snap, _ripped from her hands and sent clattering loudly against the stonework as it spins far out of reach, the furious glow along the blade’s edge vanishing—and Byleth watches the darkness devour her weapon.

Dimitri’s singular eye cuts to the discarded blade—drawn to the sight of a Hero’s Relic—and Byleth surges forward just as he swings his attention back, lance raised—

The cold bite of steel stills Dimitri where he stands—cloak snapping at his ankles, caught in phantom momentum as he abruptly aborts the movement that would kill her.

“A girl and a dagger,” Byleth remarks coolly, the blade she keeps at her belt poised against his throat. It’s still red with Randolph’s blood. “Where have I heard this story before?”

Dimitri’s breath is hot on her neck—so close she can feel his chest heave, his armor digging painfully into her side.

“You intended for me to disarm you,” he realizes, tone frigid with anger.

Byleth keeps her hand absolutely steady where she holds the dagger. An extension of a weapon. A living sword.

“You’ve grown strong,” she murmurs back. “Stronger than me, certainly. But strength alone cannot carry the day.”

Dimitri scoffs—harsh in his anger. “Still relying on unsophisticated tricks, Professor?”

Byleth presses the tip of the dagger closer—Dimitri’s throat bobs as his blood beads along the blade.

“Unsophisticated tricks are all I need,” she tells him lowly, sounding just as much a teacher as she had when she’d walked these halls as an instructor, “when my opponent relies only on brute strength.”

Silence hangs between them, and Byleth wonders, briefly, fleetingly, where she went astray. Should she have seen the signs sooner? Been less quick to dismiss those brief flashes of darkness she saw? Could she have prevented this? A woman who can turn back time, and yet all she’s left with is a fractured future—

_ No. _These are Dimitri’s ghosts, and his alone. No Divine Pulse could undo what has been festering in him for years—just as nothing she can say or do will change him.

_ Sometimes, _ Sothis had murmured to her, while she wept for Jeralt, tears hot and foreign and blinding, _ there is no good path. But the world still spins, and we stumble on. _

“You can stop,” she tells him quietly. She lowers her arm, knife slack at her side. His chest swells with a sudden intake of breath. “I don’t know what you’re waiting for, Dimitri—I don’t know what clandestine moment you think will lift this burden from you but it _ isn’t real.” _ Her hands ache with the desire to take hold of his face, to make him _ look at her— _

His lone eye narrows. “When I kill Edelgard—”

Byleth takes hold of his cloak’s ornate clasp—a heavy, metal thing intricately designed with the symbol of his House. She bares its twin at her throat, the same brooch he’d gifted her with on her birthday years ago.

_ “Enough.” _ The chill in her words could rival a winter in Faerghus, she does not doubt. “Enough, Dimitri. You can stop now—you can choose a better way this very moment.” She brings up a second hand, fingers buried in the fur of his mantle. He only stares, eye slightly wide. “The only thing keeping you from redemption is _ you. _ You are the only person who can change things. Edelgard cannot fix this. Cornelia cannot fix this. Claude cannot fix this. _ I _cannot fix this.” Her grip goes tight—white and shaking like Dorothea’s earlier—and she wonders, blindly, if she’s mourning Dimitri as Dorothea was mourning Ferdinand.

“You can kill every last person on this damned continent, Dimitri, and _ none _ of it will bring you an ounce of relief until you decide you are done with this.” She stares up at him—she’ll never get over how tall he’s become, not until she’s doubtlessly laying him to rest and _ Goddess, _that’s where this is headed, isn’t it—

She pushes away then, gaze falling back upon Randolph. The cut across his throat is clean, but the sight still makes her stomach roll.

Staring into Randolph’s sightless, dead eyes, Byleth finds her voice again.

“And if you go that far—if you cross that line, and it is truly only the two of us at the end of this—if you _ never _find yourself again...” She draws a breath, forcing herself to meet that eerie, singular gaze.

“Then what?” he demands, a rasp to his voice that she can’t place.

She holds his gaze silently for a moment—she’s certain she’s long lost the ability to unnerve him with a dead stare the way she can with so many others, but fixes him with one anyway—before she’s brushing past him roughly, stepping into the shadows to reclaim the Sword of the Creator.

“Then,” she tells him, still facing away, sheathing the blade with a shriek of metal. “We will fight again, and I will win again, and I will dig another grave.”

She glances over her shoulder then, and sees he’s gone still at her response.

“I am trying to lead you back into the light, Dimitri,” she reminds him, ever the professor, ever the leader, ever the tactician, the commander, the queen. “But if you insist on wallowing in this darkness, make no mistake—I _ will _ drown you in it.”

She pulls from the room then, the Sword of the Creator dim at her side once more, and goes off in search of a shovel.

**Author's Note:**

> wooooweeeee another three houses fic
> 
> I swear I’m actually like??? very soft for all of these characters??? but for some reason I just want to keep writing them at each other’s throats??? the next one will be more lighthearted, I promise
> 
> Byleth let Dimitri way off the hook after/during That Shit with Randolph. like so unbelievably off the hook. I kept waiting for a battle prep screen to come up like I was ready to actually fight, so here’s the missing Byleth Kicks Dimitri’s Ass Scene
> 
> like my last 3H fic and I imagine any future 3H fics, I have a baseless but persistent headcanon that the Sword of the Creator responds to Byleth’s mood, particularly her anger, and that’s what causes it to glow. I feel like the Hero’s Relics should have a bit of agency and mystique to them. anyway. this is messy in some places but I was tired of fighting with it and want to move on to another piece, _so_
> 
> come yell at me on twitter [@reduxwriter](https://twitter.com/reduxwriter) if you want or read my other Fire Emblem fics [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=fire+emblem&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&user_id=MidwesternDuchess). I started the Golden Deer route last night (just finished Blue Lions, haven’t started Black Eagles) and I’m already stupidly in love with Claude. which I think is the point.
> 
> have a good day/afternoon/evening! <3
> 
> <strike>also a moment of silence for Ingrid/Sylvain which is such a Good Fucking Ship please give them a chance they're so soft like boy I die</strike>


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